A good smell in your home can trigger positive thoughts, foster emotional well-being and put you in a great state of mind as you embrace a new day. Eliminating strange odors and smells through such devices as reed diffusers, boiling water infused with cinnamon or freshly cut flowers go a long way to freshening your home and also improving your resale value.
Knowing how scents can improve your home life and your home’s value is something worth understanding. This includes an understanding of how smells affect your mood and promote good health, and how smells create a warm and inviting environment for you, your family and invited guests and the type of responses certain scents create in different people.
How Scents Affect You
There is research that suggests that the smell of flowers in the bedroom produces positive dreams and triggers certain happy memories while you sleep. Placing freshly cut fragrant flowers from the garden next to your bed stand at night or spraying the room with a floral scent may help you dream happier dreams. This occurs because of the fact that the cells linked to your sense of smell are also a part of what is called your body’s limbic system.
It is the limbic system that is associated with the part of your brain that controls emotions, motivation and memories. Smells play a huge role in triggering stored memories and bringing about powerful emotions that may be associated with a particular smell.
Certain Scents and What They Do For Your Home
A realtor will often spray a home with the scent of fresh cookies baking or use the stove to cook up a concoction of cinnamon, all spice and orange peels to give a home a warm, spicy scent prior to a showing. This technique creates a sensation in a prospective buyer of warmth and makes the home seem inviting, thus improving the chances for a sale.
If your home has a consistent damp or moldy type smell, a trick to remove this odor or any other one is by incorporating baking soda in your vacuuming routine. Applying baking soda an affected area in your home and allowing it to set for a few moments before vacuuming can help remove an offending odor and restore freshness.
Using Scents Effectively at Home
Some scents that can help keep that warm and inviting smell in your home all of the time include citrus and vanilla. If you use a reed diffuser or keep potpourri in a basket, occasionally add a drop of vanilla oil or drop in the peels from an orange on top of your basket in order to keep those smells in your home. Other scents that you can bring into the home to produce different smells and sensations include pine cones for a woodsy smell or various essential oils, such as lavender oil, for relaxation, or grapefruit oil to uplift your spirits.
Research different types of smells and see what reaction you create within your family members or those who visit your home. Experimenting with different types of smells may help you create desired emotions and responses to your home and improve how you and others feel about where you live.
